Kim Hellberg says Middlesbrough FC did enough to win Championship play-off final
Kim Hellberg felt Middlesbrough played well enough at Wembley to book their place in next season's Premier League but he took responsibility for them failing to do so against Hull City.
All the statistics were in Boro's favour in the Championship play-off final, except for the one that mattered most - the 1-0 scoreline in the Tigers' favour.
It was symptomatic of season where good football up to the final third has come easily to the Teessiders but especially in the second half of the season, creating big chances and scoring them has not.
Asked to sum up his feelings after Oli McBurnie's 95th minute goal trashed the second chance Southampton's Spygate expulsion fron the play-offs gave Boro, the eloquent Swede struggled to find words.
"Disappointed of course, tough," was all he could come up with.
When asked about the game itself, which came on the back of Spygate and Middlesbrough only being reinstated to the play-offs on Tuesday, he elaborated: "It's been a very weird situation.
"There's no excuse in that. It's been very tough back and forth.
"But I think that performance is good enough to win today - it's not sharp enough maybe to win it, when you concede as well and create half-opportunities, the game is there to take but we didn't do that.
"It will always come down to small margins in those type of games.
"I'm disappointed that we haven't won the game, and I think over this period of time, I had players that were very good, performed in a very good way, and I have to take responsibility for not solving it in the way that was there for us.
"Then it's always a competition and it was small margins. That's what I'm most thinking about, that how I can improve, how can I work better, and take responsibility for what it's been, and then it comes down to what we'll do in the transfer window.
"How we have played football, how we have performed, how we have strengthened the bond together, how we have fought together, how we have been playing the way we play.
"There's a lot of things that have been very good. But at the end of the day, we were very close, both in the league for automatic and here. But we haven't been good enough, and that's what we have to try to be next year."